Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Imperial War Museums" channel.

  1.  @raghave1043  Nonsense. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about. You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your agenda.
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  2.  @epa2349  I suppose you have evidence to support your allegation? The communications from the time rather suggest that the administration of Bengal were keeping the facts to themselves. Certainly, Churchill regarded Europeans as more advanced, and had a patronising attitude towards Indians, but as far as I know he didn't go as far as Gandhi, who described Africans as inferior humans.
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  3. Didn't they rather have an abrupt change of mind in 1951, and maintained it for 13 years thereafter?
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  4. 23 vessels were lost in PQ17. When Admiral King refused to introduce convoys on the American East Coast after the German declaration of war, over 600 merchant ships were lost to U - Boat attacks in Operation Paukenschlag, and around 5,000 merchant seamen killed. That, without doubt, was the worst naval decision of WW2.
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  5. Might I take this opportunity to apologise to your late father on behalf of my late father, whose guns (4.5 inch mediums, of 69th Medium Regiment) helped to make some of the noise.
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  6.  @Mondo762  Thank you. A US historian once told me that Ernie King was unusual in that he seemed to hate everyone and everything. As far as I can gather, FDR & George Marshall more or less forced him to introduce a convoy system because the major losses, especially of fast tankers needed for the Pacific, was seriously harming the US/Allied war effort. Of course, once a proper convoy system was introduced, sinkings were reduced almost immediately, and the German campaign on the US East Coast was quickly abandoned. As a mere foreigner, I have never quite understood why King did not lose his job!
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  7.  @jetaddicted  Which Indians? There were around 600 Indian (Muslim) mule handlers, in four companies. Three companies were evacuated, although the fourth, on detached duty on the Maginot Line, was captured. Those who reached Britain were actually honoured with marches through a number of towns (the newspapers of the time confirm this), and Britain's, the toy firm, even produced models of them, for heaven's sake. Actually, when the Belgians surrendered, a British Division, commanded by Montgomery, as it happens, undertook a difficult night transfer to block the resulting gap in the allied line. I have never understood why people like you, with no actual knowledge, insist upon displaying you ignorance and prejudice in such a manner. Perhaps you might try to explain?
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  8. Oh dear, the distorted revisionist claptrap about the Bengal famine yet again. Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about. You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit the agenda.
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  9.  @jonsouth1545  I have always wondered if the Air Ministry regarded the British Army and Navy as greater enemies than the Germans, Japanese, and Italians. Certainly, in the years between the wars, when the AM had control of naval aviation, it systematically destroyed the Fleet Air Arm and reduced Coastal Command to virtual impotence.
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  10.  @msreviews5576  'Save his own island' was quite an achievement. Presumably you aren't able to grasp the obvious fact that a nation with a smallish population, which has the largest navy on earth, cannot also have a large army. Britain was never a major land power.
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  11. Didn't you even watch the video? Churchill argued in favour of Gallipoli (the video even explained why) but neither authorised it nor planned it.
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  12. The Air Ministry insistence in keeping vast numbers of fighters and fighter-bombers in Britain, when air support was desperately needed in the Mediterranean, was little short of criminal. At times, it is difficult to determine whose side the Air Ministry was actually on!
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  13.  @raynemichelle2996  Yes. Wouldn't it have been far better if the human race neve progressed beyond the Mesolithic, when life expectancy was to the mid 40s at best.
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  14.  @tugrulgul5903  More likely, the Britrish had commandeered two battleships being built for Turkey in British yards, whilst the Germans handed over a battlecruiser and a light cruiser of theirs to Turkey.
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  15. 51HD was not abandoned. An evacuation fleet of 67 merchant ships and around 140 smaller vessels was sent to lift them, but was prevented by thick fog. A second attempt was planned but the French unit with which 51HD were serving, IX Corps, surrendered early on 12 June, obliging 51HD to do the same. This is all detailed, in full, on the 51ND Website.
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  16.  @rodsmith3911  Mine was at Alamein, Mareth, and later Saleno, before being transferred to the military police and, oddly, ending the war outside Dunkirk. As he was a Manchester lad, I never quite worked out how he ended up in a Welsh artillery regiment ( 69th was the Carnarvonshire and Denbighshire Yeomanry).
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  17.  @hatinmyselfiscool2879  Odd that, if people didn't like him from the start, they voted him back into power in 1951. Seems like Thatcher wasn't the only one with, allegedly, a penchant for 'distorting' history.
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  18. It was precisely because of her battle damage that the Old Lady should have been preserved as a Memorial.
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  19. Churchill was still concerned with the war against Japan.
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  20.  @richardthelionheart6924  I think he really means the 83,305 US troops which actually landed as part of Operation Torch. At least, that is what the orders of battle of the US forces involved say. Almost a week after the end of 2nd Alamein, by the way.
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  21. Political speeches were often printed in full in daily newspapers the following day. Portions were sometimes read out by newsreaders. The full text was, of course, recorded in 'Hansard.' Nobody was re-writing anything.
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  22. The loathsome 'Sir' John Nott has always avoided most of the criticism he deserved for his half baked defence review.
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  23. Dynamo reduced a catastrophe to a mere defeat. For the Royal & Merchant Navies, it was a remarkable victory, and for Bertram Ramsay a triumph. What a pity that the recent 'Dunkirk' movie seemed almost to write the Royal Navy out of the story, in favour of the 'Little Ships' myth. What a pity, also, that the subsequent evacuation of 192,000 troops from French Atlantic ports, Operation Aerial, has, apparently, been lost to history.
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  24.  @gonnabeok  Perhaps 1939-1945 passed you by. The British declared war on Germany because of the German invasion of Poland, and fought to overthrow hitler for over six years as a result.
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  25.  @richardvernon317  Whether Blackburn built junk or not, it was the Air Ministry who placed the orders. On 12 April, 1918, the RNAS had 2949 aircraft and 103 airships. After the systematic evisceration inflicted upon it by the Air Ministry, it had, in September, 1939, 232 front line aircraft, at least half of which were obsolete.
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  26.  @christinemcclymont269  Indeed. Clem Attlee and the Labour Government have never received the criticism they deserved for their betrayal of the Poles they handed over to genial Uncle Joe.
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  27.  @nukni4225  Churchill would have known about a similar phrase used by Garibaldi. Between the wars, Churchill contemplated writing a biography of Garibaldi. The phrase Garibaldi used was ' "I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battle, and death," which was hardly stolen by Churchill. However, that wasn't what you claimed. You wrote ' Remember his "we shall fight in the mountains, we shall fight on the beaches ..." Stolen from Garibaldi,' and you cannot produce a source to justify your statement. Therefore, you should not muddy the waters. You should apologise for your false claim, or concede that you are a liar.
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  28. Perhaps, if you wish to bring partition up, you might look closely at the role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was the driving force behind it.
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  29.  @David_Lloyd-Jones  Odd how people resort to insults when they lack the intellectual tools to present an argument. Indeed, Churchill was First Lord, well done! As First Lord, he was the political head of the navy, but he did not have the authority to initiate campaigns, only to propose them. The ultimate authority belonged to Herbert Asquith. Perhaps you simply do not know how the British government of the time functioned. I would be happy to recommend a book or two. Moreover, as First Lord, he had no authority over ground troops, although he did command a battalion on the Western Front after leaving the government.
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  30.  @xornxenophon3652  There is certainly a flaw in your logic. Britain had a worldwide empire, and built/maintained her fleet to ensure that it, and Britain's trade routes, were protected. Who do you think ferried British troops to France without loss, similarly brought troops to the Western Front (and, of course, to Gallipoli and the Middle East) from all over the Commonwealth and Empire, and then systematically starved Germany into collapse & revolution?
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  31.  @raynemichelle2996  Indeed. If Europeans had not arrived in Africa, just think how advanced the Africa of today would be!
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  32.  @edgehodl4832  Perhaps you could deploy your vast military knowledge to enlighten us as to how, after around 100 Belgian & French divisions had either collapsed, or were collapsing, a BEF of 13 divisions could have reversed the situation?
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  33. I wonder if the current Mayor of London would be agreeable to a similar victory parade should a similar event occur in the future?
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  34. Good heavens! A general who assembles superiority in men, equipment, supplies, and intelligence, before embarking upon a campaign. How utterly shameful.
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  35. Actually, Churchill was opposed to the withdrawal from Norway, but, in view of events in France, the French insisted.
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  36.  @Musingsonthelawofattraction  Presumably your 'peers' are also teachers, but only you know the 'truth?' As someone who was once obliged to take my daughter's history teacher to task after I heard of some of the drivel he was teaching her about WW2. I wonder. In my case, the response I got was 'who are you to tell me anything about history?' As someone with a First in Modern History, who earns his crust as a naval historian, I was happy to tell him.
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  37.  @profesercreeper  Odd then, that Gort's actions were the result of a meeting with General Blanchard, on Sunday 26 May. Both agreed that Weygand's plan for an offensive was unrealistic, and decided to withdraw the main allied line behind the Lys. When Belgium surrendered at 0400 on 28 May, a British Division was actually rushed into place to fill the resulting gap in the Allied line. Around 120,000 French troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, by the way.
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  38.  @dscott6629  In point of fact, the British army actually recovered quite rapidly after Dunkirk & Aerial, to the extent that by August it was possible to send a large troop convoy to North Africa. By 17 September, there were 34.5 divisions in Britain, of which 20 were allocated to coastal defence, with 14.5 in reserve.
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  39.  @Boppy-B-B  How is that 'segregation?' Gurkhas did, by the way have their own officers, as also did Indian formations. Within an 'Indian' Brigade, by the way, there were usually three battalions. Two were Indian, and one British. Read about, for example, 4th Indian Division at 2nd Alamein, which had three infantry brigades, consisting of 3 British & 6 Indian, battalions.
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  40.  @robertcottam8824  I suspect that to many of these people Montgomery's greatest sin was that of being born in the wrong country.
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  41.  @msreviews5576  Actually, Churchill had significant influence on the strategy of the Western Allies throughout to war. One of his major achievements was to dissuade George Marshall from forcing through his ideas about a landing in France in 1942 or 1943. The Island he saved, by the way, together with the Commonwealth & Empire, remained the dominant force in the west until the last nine months of the war in the west. Certainly, D-Day would never have been possible without the British & Canadians. He didn't, by the way, 'win the war,' which is why I have never claimed that he did. The war was won by a great alliance, with the Soviet Union playing the major part on land. Churchill, and the British resistance in 1940-41, made possible that resistance. Churchill didn't 'fade away' after the war, either. He was Prime Minister again from October 1951 until April 1955, when he stepped down at the age of eighty. Finally he didn't make any reference to a "shall reign a thousand year " empire. He actually said, 'if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." Did the words 'Commonwealth' & 'if' pass you by?
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  42.  @xornxenophon3652  Where else would you suggest the Grand Fleet could have been used? The Somme, Verdun, or Passchendaele?
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  43.  @voxbour6018  How exactly was the British Empire (which far predated Churchill, by the way) genocidal? By the way, which wars did Churchill actually 'monger?'
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  44.  @జైతెలుగు  You obviously haven't heard of Jinnah. The real force behind Partition and the millions of deaths.
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  45. Your reference to 'the Brits' is incorrect. The vast majority of the British population would have been delighted to honour the Poles. The lack of an invitation was because the British Government did not wish to annoy genial Uncle Joe. The British had a LABOUR government at the time, led by Clement Attlee.
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  46. Really? You think that the remains of 13 divisions, after around 100 French and Belgian divisions had collapsed or were collapsing, should have fought it out uselessly? Easy to say 80 years after the event, from a comfy chair!
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  47.  @jamesb2166  So? In 1929. The Labour party won 287 seats with 8,048,968 votes, the Conservatives won 260 seats with 8,252,527 votes. In February, 1974, Labour won 301 seats with 11,645,616 votes. The Conservatives won 297 seats with 11,872,180 votes. These anomalies do occur in any constituency based electoral system from time to time. The following is perhaps more symptomatic of the general mood in the country:- The 1950 Election, which Labour narrowly won, showed a swing to the Conservatives of 4.3% and a swing away from Labour of 1.6% There was a further 4.6% swing towards the Conservatives in the election of 1951.
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  48.  @kalyana9705  Are you really deluded enough, or gullible enough, to believe that, at a time when 2.5 million Indians had volunteered to join the Allied forces, Churchill would have engineered a mass famine in the sub-continent? Presumably, you are not a member of Mensa! Actually, the Bengal Famine had a number of causes, among which were the number of refugees from Japanese held areas, the inability to import food from those same areas, stockpiling by hoarders and, perhaps worst of all, the Bengal administration, which tried to minimise the crisis. The worst that could be said of Churchill was that he should have known what was taking place, but didn't. After all, in 1943, he had little else to worry about. You could also add the refusal of FDR to allow the transfer of merchant shipping, by the way. What is without dispute, except by those who choose to blame Churchill for everything since the Black Death, is that once he did find out, he transferred food distribution to the British Indian Army, and had grain convoys diverted from Australia to India. I appreciate, of course, that you won't believe any of this, as it doesn't suit your rather prejudiced agenda.
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  49. A small correction. Prinz Eugen never reached Norway. She sailed for Norway with Scheer and five destroyers on 21 February, 1942, but was torpedoed by HMS Trident, causing serious damage to her stern. After completing repairs in Kiel by January 1943, she spent the rest of the war in the Baltic. You would expect the IWM to know this, I suggest?
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  50. Was that why the High Seas Fleet spent the rest of the war swinging round anchor chains in the Jade, whilst the Royal Navy maintained a blockade which systematically starved Germany into collapse, revolution and, in the case of the HSF, mutiny? Because of their 'victory' at Jurland?
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